CFCF sets up HD transmitter to close Super Bowl ad loophole

For the past few years, a loophole in the CRTC’s simultaneous substitution rules has allowed Videotron HD subscribers to watch the Super Bowl and other programming with the U.S. commercials.

This year, CTV is determined to close that loophole, and has setup a digital HD transmitter on Mount Royal to do so.

Though he called the timing “coincidental” (it only just got approval from Industry Canada to start transmitting), CFCF station manager Don Bastien confirmed Friday the rumours that have been spreading online. He says the transmitter has been setup and is expected to begin testing within hours (UPDATE: The transmitter is running, with signal reports coming in from all over). He also says the station informed Videotron and other television distributors weeks ago that it intends to enforce the rule on simultaneous substitution and replace the Super Bowl feed on WFFF (Fox 44) with its own on Feb. 6.

The loophole explained

Simultaneous substitution is a CRTC policy that requires cable companies to replace a U.S. channel with a feed from a local Canadian TV station when the two are running identical programming. The idea is that advertising revenue would remain in Canada, because the advertising is sold by the local station.

Most of the year, this isn’t an issue (assuming it’s done correctly – often there are glitches, particularly when live shows run past their scheduled time). But Super Bowl Sunday has a reputation as much for its million-dollar commercials as its championship football and rocking half-time show. And those while those commercials air nationally in the United States, not all of them will air on Canadian television as well.

Under the rules of simultaneous substitution, the Canadian signal must be a local, broadcasting television signal, which is of equal or greater quality than the American one. Since CFCF was not broadcasting in high definition, Videotron was not obligated to substitute the U.S. HD feed with the special HD feed that CFCF provided the cable company off-air. Nor could they replace the U.S. HD feed with a standard-definition feed from CFCF.

Now, with a digital transmitter running and expected to remain that way during the Super Bowl, the only way to get the game with U.S. commercials (legally) is to setup an antenna and pick up WFFF over the air from across the border. (We’ll see how many bars want to go through that much trouble.)

Temporary transmitter

Because the analog transmitters are still running on Mount Royal, broadcasters have setup temporary digital transmitters across the city in less prime locations. CFCF’s is just next to the Mount Royal transmitter, on Channel 51 (the PSIP system has it show on TVs as “12.1”), with an effective radiated power of about 6,000 Watts. Though it’s nowhere near the 325 kilowatts being put out by its analog transmitter, it’s probably good enough that people who can see the mountain can pick it up over the air.

“Getting what we paid for”

When asked about preventing Montreal cable viewers from getting U.S. commercials, Bastien wasn’t sympathetic. “We have paid the Canadian rights to the Super Bowl,” he said. “The broadcast should be a Canadian broadcast. It’s not a matter of taking away something from Canadian viewers, but rather us getting what we paid for.”

Just watch them online

Watch WFFF over the air with an antenna, assuming you get good enough reception. (Your TV must have an ATSC digital tuner)

Watch the commercials online after the fact, on sites like YouTube. It’s not like the advertisers want to put roadblocks between their works of art and your eyeballs.

UPDATE (Jan. 31): CTV has issued a press release announcing the station being on the air, which I guess means it’s out of testing now. Like most press releases by media companies, it’s intentionally misleading for the sake of pretending to be better than the competition. It says “CTV becomes Canada’s only broadcaster to have HD transmitters in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Montréal,” but it obviously chooses those cities selectively, leaving out that even with CFCF, it trails Citytv and Global in the number of cities with digital transmitters (and it matches CBC at four). It also talks quite a bit about CFCF’s newscast, which might give people the impression that the newscast will be in high definition, but that’s months, probably years away.

This is a day and age where everyone gets channels from either cable or satellite! We don’t need to have a Canadian channel broadcast it here, especially when it comes from one of the major 4. If it’s something from CW, FX, TBS, HBO, ok, fine! But when it’s from ABC, CBS, NBC or FOX, why on earth do we need ?

Maybe if CTV and Global would spend more money on original content, and less on buying broadcasting rights on American shows, we wouldn’t have this problem!

Don’t get me wrong! I’m not bitter about the Super Bowl ads! Yeah, it’s fun to watch them, but they are usually available online! But I’ve always had issues with Sim-Sub, because if I wanna watch The Simpsons on Sunday nights, for instance, I wanna watch it on Fox. Not on Global. And I hate that sim-sub is basically telling me “You can watch their show, but you have to watch it here!”

Seriously, if CTV and Global want to spend all their money on American shows and syndication, then they should close down and have all their stations affiliated with one of the US Big 4…

Maybe if CTV and Global would spend more money on original content, and less on buying broadcasting rights on American shows, we wouldn’t have this problem!

Perhaps, but the would counter that without these rules, Canadians wouldn’t watch Canadian TV at all, and would the U.S. stations would get ad revenue off our backs. It’s not like a great Canadian drama is going to get people to tune away from the Super Bowl.

I’m sitting in a building on Saint Laurent near Duluth, 8 stories up with direct line of sight to the antennae and I’m seeing 61% signal strength on one of my (digital ATSC) tuners. I’m really hoping this is just a problem with my antenna because otherwise this is BS. If less than a kilometer radius receives the signal then…

(Also, cancon regulations should be applied to simsub’ing to guarantee the originality and variety of commercials).

I’m sitting in a building on Saint Laurent near Duluth, 8 stories up with direct line of sight to the antennae and I’m seeing 61% signal strength on one of my (digital ATSC) tuners. I’m really hoping this is just a problem with my antenna because otherwise this is BS. If less than a kilometer radius receives the signal then…

Keep in mind they’ve just started testing, and this transmitter is only running a few kilowatts. By the fall, when they switch over, it’ll be much more powerful.

(Also, cancon regulations should be applied to simsub’ing to guarantee the originality and variety of commercials).

I don’t think CanCon regulations guarantee either originality or variety. Obviously commercials won’t air on CFCF unless they’re useful for a Canadian audience (i.e. the product they’re trying to sell is available in Canada).

This is suppose to be a low powered transmitter on Channel 51. In September, CFCF-DT is suppose to go full power on Channel 12. For now it can’t, because CFCF-TV is using that channel for their analog signal.

That’s great news for me, not in terms of football per se, but for over-the-air HD transmission. CFCF comes in horribly in analog in my east-end area and from my experience with other channels like Rad-Can, the switch to HD signals makes a day-and-night difference.

from my experience with other channels like Rad-Can, the switch to HD signals makes a day-and-night difference.

The thing with digital transmission is you either get it or you don’t. There’s no snow or fuzz or other noise. So for many people it will come in crystal clear, but if you normally get it fuzzy you might not get the digital signal at all.

(To clarify, my point about simsubbing is that my objection to simsubbing is getting the same crappy commercial 30 times, whereas the american market has better and more varied commercials. It’s enough to make a lad install a linux PVR and never watch commercials ever again.)

If according to CTV’s spokesdope “The broadcast should be Canadian”, maybe he can explain why most of the commercials that CTV will show will have to do with Budweiser (An American beer – not that anybody should give a hoot about who “bottles” it here). And, of course, we’ll get absolutely bombarded with those ridiculous “metallic football player running through downtown Toronto” skits, each one plugging such distinctively fine Canadian entertainment as “S&%T My Dad Says”, “Big Bang Theory”, “Blue Bloods”, and “Groin’s Monotony”. Mind you, I’m sure there will be approximately 2,623 plugs for the season finale of “Flashpoint”, which CTV will arrogantly think that it’s “audience” will continue to watch after the game. Watch the numbers spin press release the next day. It’s going to be a doozy.

On the funnier side, I’ll bet the farm the FOX feed will be featuring all kinds of upfront and subliminal references to “Glee” which they are running after the show down there (including one of the cast members singing “America The Beautiful”.) That should have many a Shaw exec chuckling….

Indeed, the guys in the motorcycle helmets (they’re not football helmets) running endlessly down the sidewalk is just… moronic. They make me switch away to RDS. I was happy when NFL football passed from Global to CTV but those CTV spots are so incredibly awful, worse than anything Global did imo. Maybe there’ll be less of them because CTV will have sold the airtime. God, I hope so.

CFCF-DT is up and running. Broadcasting on Channel 51, and re-mapping on the TV as 12.1.

For those who don’t have cable or sat, but do have a HDTV, or a Digital to Analog box, try it out. You’ll get a much better over the air signal than any analog signal could provide. Aim your antenna towards Mont-Royal, and tune in to channel 51.1
Once it locks onto the signal, it will re-map as channel 12.1
For those with a digital to analog box, just punch in channel 51. The same thing will happen.
Just remember that you need a antenna with UHF abilities for it to work best. Rabbit ear antennas are mainly for channels 2-13. If your antenna has a loop on it, that should be for channels 14-69.

They are going to spend millions to redo the studios, but they won’t move them to HD until some time later. But if there is a way for them to bring in a few more ad dollars, they spend up the wazoo, overtime and all, to get a temporary digital transmitter up in time to take the cash.

It is very disappointing to say the least, and proof that CFCF died somewhere on it’s way to it’s 50th birthday. Congrats to CTV Montreal for giving me one less reason to ever tune to your channel. The one to watch? No, the one to watch out for.

Just to clear up a few points about some folks being upset about CFCF-DT forcing a simsub issue. Look, I agree with you. I hate simsub. That is why I’m only OTA.

As for CFCF-DT going on air now. CFCF-DT had received a temporary transmission channel to use before the final cut off date. This was channel 21. In fact, all channels that have to go digital have been assigned a temporary channel. It looked like CFCF was going to wait until the switchover date on September 1, 2011 before it activated it’s HD transmitter. Even to the point that they even lost use of channel 21. But, lucky for us, somebody made the smart move to proceed with this temporary assignment on channel 51. This was suppose to happen, in order to assist people to prepare for the analog switch off. Just like the US stations did.

The smart thing to do is use these temporary transmissions to set up your over the air TV situation. Buy a digital to analog box. Or a HDTV. Or even get a better TV antenna. Don’t wait until September 1, 2011 to turn on your TV and find out that all your over the air channels have disappeared. It’s at this point that people will panic, and go crazy calling up Videotron, Bell TV, and Shaw Direct in order to get TV again. So, use these 7 months before that date to prepare for the transition.

Now, since there is very poor info out there about what will happen…

Right now, the following DT stations are up and running in Montreal. All of them are low powered. And not all can be received due to their temporary placement of their transmitters. So, even if you try and pick them up, don’t be frustrated if you don’t. Remember Low-Powered.

If the plans go ahead as they are suppose to, on September 1, 2011 all the following stations are suppose to go full powered. Just note the channel assignments. You’ll see that nobody is using any channel below 10 in Montreal. This is important to know. If you where using a simple rabbit ear antenna (VHF) to get channel 6, This might give you a problem. They will be on channel 21, and as such, make sure you will have a antenna that can handle UHF (Channels 14-51)

Like I pointed out. Use this time to figure out what you’ll do. This of course only applies to people who rely on over the air TV. If you have cable/sat this won’t effect you. Except for the simsub part.

When I spoke with someone at CFTU’s engineering department in the latter half of 2010, he told me they would be staying on Channel 29 and using the current transmission location (top of U of M dome).
Their conversion will meet the transition deadline.
He also said the effective radiated power (ERP) of their future digital transmissions will give them comparable coverage to analog.
(As a reference, CFTU’s Industry Canada DTV allocation has a max ERP of 4 kW on Channel 29.)

12.2 and so on are optional channels, and should be used to put other programming out there. The Fox WFFF channel has 44.1 as fox and 44.2 as The CW, two seperate channels.

But in Canada, you are unlikely to see anything like this, in part because we don’t have that many different networks, and also because the cable channels don’t want to have to conform to OTA rules. So you won’t be seeing anything on those channels for a long time to come.

With the end of analog broadcasting in canada I am waiting for some of those “easy to get” digital-to-analog” converters to show up in stores. I am still waiting! Never have I seen an ad in the papers of any place selling these. Or of any ads on tv telling us about this change. OK, I don’t watch that much tv, but this upcoming change is majorly unpublicized.

Apparently, it’s all HD all the time, and fugedaboutit for anyone (we’re still here!) with a older tv and an antenna.

The digital to analog boxes are available in Montreal. Not advertised much because the retail outlets would prefer to sell you a Cable/Sat package with your new HDTV. Even good TV antennas are hard to find. But, they are available in Montreal. You just have to look.

As for cheap boxes, several months ago I had seen them being offered for $30 on the Montreal Craigslist.

Even look at online stores such as amazon.ca, the source, future shop. Your best bet though is to find a retail outlet that specializes in this sort of thing such as Raybel.

If you get a box, make sure it has a analog pass thru indicated on the box.

What about Videotron’s US time-shifting channels? I have them in standard def and the feeds always include the local Seattle commercials, no simsub…

If the programming airs at the same time, Videotron should be doing substitution. If it’s time-shifted by three hours, as most prime-time programming is, then it won’t be. CRTC rules don’t (yet?) provide for non-simultaneous substitution.

When you deal with sat tv (where you have the alternate time zone), they simsub the “local” channel for that time zone. So if it’s Seattle, you get simsub of CTV or global or whatever it is, at that time. Sat tv doesn’t appear to take your local market into consideration, the simsub in the east is usually Toronto (ain’t that grand?).

WFFF’s DT signal isn’t very good when compared to WCAX, which transmits from the same place and sends a booming signal into Montreal. My tests last night show that WFFF is almost impossible to get even when WCAX is 70% or better signal. I think CTV knows this, and understands that most people won’t be able to go OTA for the superbowl.

Give it about another 3-5 years, and all of this will be meaningless, as we will be doing direct IPtv (not bell TV, just TV over the internet) in HD without any major restrictions.

Give it about another 3-5 years, and all of this will be meaningless, as we will be doing direct IPtv (not bell TV, just TV over the internet) in HD without any major restrictions.

Except the restrictions broadcasters impose upon themselves. The Super Bowl, like most live sports programming, is licensed to broadcasters who pay a heavy price for it. Unless they play ball with IPtv or other forms of broadcasting, you’re not going to be able to see the game.

You missed my point on this one. I think that all the CRTC jumping through hoops thing is lost. We all have a system coming into out homes that is more than capable of providing us decent TV, if the broadcasters choose to use it. Given a few years, that will much more likely be the reality of network TV anyway. At that point, the Superbowl, commercials and all, will be online and not just OTA. Restrictions will fall away over time, because they are unnatural and imposed not by physical restriction but by the stoke of the government’s pen. That won’t last.

That theory is all good and well, until the same CRTC decided to impose a download cap to every ISPs… Not only we can’t watch American channels if CTV or Global decide so, but we can’t stream too much of it…

Maybe someone can answer this, so I will ask a question… I have done some research and I have found out that RC MTL and CBC MTL are now transmitting from the CBC Building on Rene Levesque…

In Sept will they transmit the signal frrom MT ROYAL…..

I ask this because I have a hard time locking on to their signal now…sometimes its OK and most times it sucks these days… it was good till about mid-DEC not sure what changed since then…. I have not moved the TV or any furniture in the room…or the location of the antenna….

I am on the 3rd floor facing MT Royal and all the other HD channels…come in with no issues… even TQ which has a transmitter at the Olympic Stadium Tower i think…

Yes, the various broadcasters have setup temporary digital transmitters on temporary channels and in temporary locations. At the end of August, when the CRTC requires the analog transmitters shut down, transmitters will be installed at the Mount Royal antenna tower and hooked up to new antennas that went up in the summer of 2010. Not only will they be higher and have a clearer line of sight, but they should also be more powerful, and so easier to receive.

In winter conditions, sometimes signal is lost for various reasons. Snow changes some relfectivity, might be blocking the signal. The temporary antennas might also be taking on a bit of ice and being less effective. With digital, it’s really “yes or no”, you could have a perfect picture at 60% signal, and absolutely nothing at 55%.

The SRC and CBC Montreal stations may even begin transmitting from Mont-Royal even before September 2011. There was indication months ago that they would kick in before that with lower power signals. But, there have been some sort of delays?

As for the % mentioned about picture lock, each TV internal tuner is different. So is the % at which the signal meter measures picture lock. Some models lock at 60%, some lock at 34%, some at other %’s, some don’t even use a percentage and use a bar indicator. What I’m trying to point out is, you need to find out at what point you get a picture lock on your TV.

I love CTV press releases. Of course, the bigger reality not mentioned is that satellite subscribers already had access to HD “CTV programming” for years via CTV East and West (fancy-talk for “Toronto and Vancouver”.) The more honest release should have read as follows:

“CTV announces that it’s digital transmitter is up sufficiently enough to screw up the Super Bowl. To Videotron and it’s subscribers this weekend: Suck It!”

Meanwhile in Gatineau, Bell is begging for the CTV acquisition to go through by throwing bones at independent producers and local news coverage but threatening to shut down A Channel – as in the A Channel they opted to take (read: overpay for) in order to get clearance for the CHUM acquisition a few years ago. Watch in the next five years how this network does everything in it’s power to try and pare itself down to the four cities where they have the digital transmitters.

does anyone know the magnitude of the fine if Videotron chooses not to comply with the SimSub requirement and instead broadcasts the U.S. feed of the Superbowl?

I don’t think there’s a set fine for this kind of thing, but CTV would take it to the CRTC, which would hold a hearing and eventually order Videotron to comply. If they didn’t, they could face fines or have their license to operate a cable service revoked.

To keep in mind for next year, we subscribed to US Time-shifting on Videotron last week, and come game time the American signal was NOT replaced by the CTV’s one.

The only thing with this, other than the fact that CTV will probably make sure it doesn’t happen again, is that the time-shifting isn’t available in high definition. I suppose people could switch channels during the commercials (and it wouldn’t matter if they only had SD to start with).

Alright, so if I install an antenna to my HDTV, I’ll get CBS from the United States next year?

Yes, although the Super Bowl next year will be broadcast on NBC.

I live in Laval. Does this stil work in Laval?

For the purposes of simultaneous substitution, Laval is no different from Montreal. Whether it works is a question of whether the antenna can pick up a digital transmission from across the border. The antenna might need to be outside, on a roof, for any signal to be captured.

We have Shaw (StarChoice) satellite service. We watched the game yesterday in HD on the US West Coast Fox affiliate from Seattle or Portland (I forget which one now) and we received the full U.S. feed with all the U.S. commercials.

And to be fair, given that everyone can watch the commercials online the day after (sometimes the day of), and also given the fact that sim-sub has been there for over 10 years, people in general don’t care about that! Plus, not everyone has HD, so for them, it was just “business as usual” yesterday!

“Hello CRTC? I want to complain that I was forced to watch a free Canadian broadcast of an American event. It’s just not fair that a Canadian broadcaster would be able to make money off my eyeballs, like they do every other day of the year, instead of letting me watch the American commercials that I didn’t pay for either”